So I'm back in Philadelphia. I've touched base with various family members and agreed to babysit Thursday night (to the great pleasure of the parents, the studious indifference of the seven-year-old (he was deeply engrossed in A Cartoon Guide to Physics at the time), and the vocal disagreement of the three-year-old. I think we'll get on just fine. I could find a book about bees to go along with the bit of comb, and then I wouldn't see Danny all evening.

I'm at my father's house. I've decided that there are a number of things that need to happen here if I'm going to live here part-time all summer . . . ( More for myself than anyone else )

In short, I think that the next week or two is going to involve doing a LOT of laundry. I should probably get ready to go to my grandma's now.

-Went to the Spanish Consulate
-Waited in line
-Acquired my visa/reclaimed my passport
-Missed the 10:00 bus by all of six minutes
-Waited until the 12:01 bus
-Read all of the informational packets and handouts given to my by the Office of International Study (the first one was interesting. I'm sure the one on how-not-to-get-robbed-blind/mugged-and-left-in-the-street was useful. The one about imports and exports and GNP and this is all of the most recent political leaders and how they interacted with US foreign policy but very little on what they actually did for the country was dense, dry, and boring, and most of the useful data that it contained had already been presented to me by the first packet.)
-Discovered that the Power of Attorney form not only needs to be notarized, it needs my mom's signature. (Just as well; that's an excellent reason to put it off for another two weeks)
-Sat on a bus for 2 3/4 hours and listened to Dealing with Dragons.
-Got a new OneCard because the magnetic strip on my last one was going (it occurs to me that my new Lab Consultant nametag has a very powerful magnet on the back; ought I to be careful to keep it away from cards with magnetic strips in addition to computers and other electronics?)
-Bought an adaptor (actually six adapters) for Miss Eliza for foreign travel. I don't actually need most of them, but I'm sure that I'll someday have a use for an adapter that lets me plug her in in India (or not. I'd've been just as glad to pay less and only get the one for Continental Europe.)
-Talked to Student and Financial Services and discovered that I've been billed something like $250 less than I expected to be for housing this summer.
-Have failed to find any reasonable reason for this. I would think that it has to do with the fact that Housing billed me for reunion when they shouldn't've - only the numbers don't work out quite right for that.
-Briefly debated whether or not being a good Christian/good person obligates me to try to resolve this issue.
-Seem to have decided that answer to above is yes, barely. My mother suggests an e-mail. One e-mail. I believe that this will be my course of action, especially considering how well Housing has been doing at replying to my e-mails.
-Visited Housing and confirmed that I would be staying an extra week. I'd already done this (by e-mail), but it's a good thing that I stopped by in person, because it wasn't on my record.
-While at Housing, determined that I can indeed store boxes in JMG whilst I'm abroad (this query had previously been presented in an e-mail, and was not answered).
-Called my mother
-Discovered that my dad has been operating with the understanding that he's coming up this Friday to take me home, despite the phone conversation in which I confirmed that he's going to pick me up next Friday.
-Called my father and made sure that he wrote down the relevant dates (and removed written instances of incorrect dates)
-Did a load of laundry
-Swept my floor
-Gave Emily two recipes
-Talked with my mother on the phone again and confirmed that the bill is very odd.

I will now e-mail Housing.

Tomorrow, in addition to going to work, I'll talk to the mail ladies and see if they can put off forwarding my mail for another week.

Well, I've acquired a system disk. Now I just need to wait for it to arrive. I probably payed far too much for it, but a knowledgeable person told me that this was what I wanted, and I figured that being overcharged was probably preferable to spending another goodness-knows-how-long looking for one. But I do hope that this actually fixes Lucinda and I don't have to go and buy a laptop anyway (after being overcharged for the system disk).

I'm in the computer lab, alternating between being productive and procrastinating. I've gotten most of the SSFFS things done (except for the flyers for Jane Yolen's talk (Madison, when can I expect the dragon? Or are you too busy and I should just go with what I scanned in and fiddled with?).) and will now do fencing fudge-things, and then I'll mail a letter if the campus center is still open, and then I'll read a bit before bed.

I'm enjoying the clothing restoration workshop, but I think I'll hold off on talking about it until I have a convenient way to show some of the pictures I've been taking.

That's all. Goodnight